Occupy Wall Street reaches 1-month birthday
The month-old Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, with nearly $300,000 in the bank and participants finding satisfaction in the widening impact they hope will counter the influence on society by those who hold the purse strings of the world’s economies.
The expanding occupation of land once limited to a small Manhattan park in the shadow of the rising World Trade Center complex continued through the weekend, with hundreds of thousands of people rallying around the world and numerous encampments springing up in cities large and small.
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The movement has become an issue in the Republican presidential primary race and beyond, with politicians from both parties under pressure to weigh in.
President Barack Obama referred to the protests at Sunday’s dedication of a monument for Martin Luther King Jr., saying the civil rights leader “would want us to challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing those who work there.”
Many of the largest of Saturday’s protests were in Europe, where those involved in long-running demonstrations against austerity measures declared common cause with the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Rome, hundreds of rioters infiltrated a march by tens of thousands of demonstrators, causing what the mayor estimated was at least â‚¬1 million ($1.4 million) in damage to city property.

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Occupy protesters eye diversity as movement grows (Wall Street Journal)
The outcry against the nation’s financial institutions that has swept the country in recent weeks has crossed many boundaries, including class, gender and age. But a stubborn hurdle in many cities has been a lack of racial inclusion, something noted by organizers and participants alike.
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On Saturday, the nation’s capital provided a sharp contrast: A few dozen white protesters were camped out in Washington’s Freedom Plaza. They were separate from Occupy DC but hold similar ideals. Not far away, thousands marched to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Their rallying cry was similar, if not identical — yet the vast majority were black.
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Most of the people at Occupy Boston on Friday appeared to be young and white, with just a handful of blacks, Latinos and Asians in an area not far from the city’s Chinatown neighborhood.

Wall Street protesters avoided a showdown Friday that could have forced them from their Manhattan camp, but they still face the same question that would have confronted them if they had been evicted: Where do they go from here?

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been more successful than even its own organizers would have predicted when they began nearly a month ago. The New York City protest has shown staying power, garnered considerable media attention and inspired satellite protests in more than 100 cities nationwide.

Spreading Protests Yet to Jell (Wall street Journal)
“We are not going to make demands. We are not going to become a political party,” said Sonia Silbert, a longtime political activist who was at the Occupy DC encampment a few blocks from the White House Sunday. “The second we start making demands, we start splintering, and we are no longer the 99%.”
This is in clear contrast with the tea-party movement, which has become a force in national politics. It started with the goal of reducing government spending and found a galvanizing issue in the fight against President Barack Obama’s health-care plan.
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It is unclear if the month-old movement, grounded in a general discontent with the economic situation and corporations, can transform its energy into influence on politics and policy—even though some Democratic politicians seem to have warmed to the movement.
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Protesters in Minneapolis were camped in the south plaza of the Hennepin County Government Center. Nick Espinosa, 25 years old, said his group “was in the process of finding a functional decision-making process and structure” for their organization, and their goals included “taking actions that highlighted the inequality of wealth in the country and corporate control.”

Protesters in Europe march against corporate greed (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Italian riot police fired tear gas and water cannons in Rome on Saturday as violent protesters hijacked a peaceful demonstration against corporate greed, smashing bank windows, torching cars and hurling bottles.Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands nicknamed “the indignant” marched without incident in cities across Europe, as the “Occupy Wall Street” protests linked up with long-running demonstrations against European governments’ austerity measures.

Protesters in Europe March Against Corporate Greed (foxnews.com)
“People of Europe: Rise Up!” read one banner in Rome. Some peaceful demonstrators turned against the violent group and tried to stop them, hurling bottles, Sky Italia and ANSA said. Others fled, scared by the raw violence.In Frankfurt, continental Europe’s financial hub, some 5,000 people protested at the European Central Bank, and some were setting up a tent camp aiming at permanently occupying the green space in front of the ECB building.Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke to about 500 demonstrators outside St. Paul’s cathedral in London, calling the international banking system a “recipient of corrupt money.”

Martin Boldray, who lives in Emilia Romagna, Northern Italy, wrote from there: “The violence on the streets of Rome today raise memories of the Anti-Globalization protest in Genoa ten years ago which resulted in the death of Carlo Giuliani.My fear is that any legitimate aims get hi-jacked by groups intent on violent confrontation which will be as politically progressive as the recent rioting and looting in the UK.I would like to stress here that my sympathies lie with the protesters and I am as sick and tired of the failure of capitalism as they are.”

‘Indignant’ Protests to Sweep Across World (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted Wednesday the Wall Street demonstrations, which bring thousands of people together for marches, would one day spell the downfall of the West.“This movement will soar to completely mark the downfall of the West and the capitalist regime,” he said.

The Global Economy – Out through the In Door? (ritholtz.com)
In 2008, panicked governments and central banks injected massive amounts of money into the economy, in the form of government spending, tax concessions, ultra low interest rates and “non-conventional” monetary strategies – code for printing money. The actions did stave off the Great Depression 2.0 temporarily, converting it into a deep recession –the US economy shrank by 8.9% in 2008.As individuals and companies reduced debt as banks cut off the supply of credit, governments increased their borrowing propping up demand to keep the game going for a little longer. The actions bought time. Governments gambled on a return to growth, solving all the problems. That bet has failed.

You: The Face of Anger (thedailybeast.com)
On last Tuesday’s “Millionaires March” past the homes of such financial titans as Rupert Murdoch and David Koch, the protesters looked very different. They looked like Americans—ordinary people fed up by the unfairness that has infected our national life in recent years. It’s the unfairness of reckless financiers triggering a brutally harsh economic crisis, accepting a government bailout, and then going on to become even richer while everybody else has been left to struggle.

Wall Street Sit-In Goes Global Saturday (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
“We have people from all walks of life joining us every day,” said Spyro, one of those behind a Facebook page in London which has grown to have some 12,000 followers in a few weeks, enthused by Occupy Wall Street. Some 5,000 have posted that they will turn out, though even some activists expect fewer will.

America’s indignados (blogs.ft.com)
Unlike in previous corporate scandals – such as Enron and Tyco – there have been no high-profile arrests, following the Wall Street crash of 2008. And yet the economic and fiscal consequences of the crash have been incomparably more severe. than the post dot.com scandals. That fact, plus the survival of the “bonus culture” in the big banks, has fed the public perception that Wall Street has “got away with it”.

“People all over the world, we are saying ‘Enough is enough’.”(voceroboliviano.wordpress.com)
Concrete demands are few from those who proclaim “We are the 99 percent,” other than a general sense that the other 1 percent – the “greedy and corrupt” rich, and especially banks – should pay more, and that elected governments are not listening.
“It’s time for us to unite; it’s time for them to listen; people of the world, rise up!” proclaims the Web site United for #GlobalChange. “We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers who do not represent us … We will peacefully demonstrate, talk and organize until we make it happen.”

Protesters To Occupy London, Rome, Madrid Saturday(huffingtonpost.com)
Concrete demands are few from those who proclaim “We are the 99 percent,” other than a general sense that the other 1 percent – the “greedy and corrupt” rich, and especially banks – should pay more, and that elected governments are not listening.
“It’s time for us to unite; it’s time for them to listen; people of the world, rise up!” proclaims the Web site United for #GlobalChange. “We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers who do not represent us … We will peacefully demonstrate, talk and organize until we make it happen.”

Bill Mann’s Canada: Occupy finally comes to roost in Vancouver (marketwatch.com)
Adbuster creations, like anti-smoking symbol Joe Chemo, and its anti-Nike sportswear “subadvertisements” that proclaim, “Just Douche It,” are pretty funny. Adbusters has always focused largely on the powerful American advertising industry, and it’s cultivated a growing, if modest, core of young followers with its strong anti-consumerist message.
Still, the youthful Adbusters staff here in British Columbia must be more than a bit surprised by the current widespread political demonstrations in the U.S. they inspired — occupations that are (finally) drawing attention from the media and politicians. The magazine and its anti-ads have been called sophomoric — accurately, I would argue. Occupy Wall Street sometimes seems like a Canadian fraternity prank that’s gotten out of hand.
But the Canadian magazine has hit a nerve in the U.S. at just the right time economically. Adbusters, you could say, has exposed and exploited capitalism’s Achilles heel. Just as, I would argue, Canada’s far saner banking and more humane health-care systems have highlighted it.

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